Category Archives: Uncategorized

Doing the Left Undone

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Often in this blog, I employ my professional expertise in urban planning to illuminate issues for readers, as I have tried to do with aspects of the pandemic in recent weeks. But in this post, my aim is far simpler and more mundane. I will apply the most generic form of personal planning to an issue that perhaps is needling your thoughts in coronavirus-imposed isolation. Perhaps you are working from home if you are lucky. Perhaps you are retired but unaccustomed to having nowhere to go. Or perhaps you are struggling with sudden job loss or taking care of another family member. If I help anyone to sort through the opportunities and silver linings within the dark clouds, then I will have served a function. And there is nothing I love better in life than feeling useful. That is one reason this blog even exists. I could instead be standing on a bridge over a river, watching birds migrate. Oh, yes, forgot. I blogged about exactly that more than a month ago, before stay-at-home orders kept me in Chicago instead of Nebraska.

My days at home have been filled with two very different types of activities. One involves thinking big thoughts about the current crisis and its aftermath, while engaged in the planning and administrative activities associated with chairing the Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Division of the American Planning Association. In sunnier days in the fall of 2017, I was elected chair-elect, a two-year voluntary position that leads automatically to becoming chair, which happened on January 1, 2020. I hardly envisioned the current circumstances. No one has such a crystal ball. Much time has been consumed with moving meetings online and thinking through the needed changes in programming.

Beyond that, I have other volunteer work with a regional authors group and our church. It is enough to fill many of my days. For the moment, I have abandoned the search for paid work. Consulting seems secondary, and no one is inviting speakers to conferences in the foreseeable future. I do, however, need to begin preparing to teach my fall semester online course at the University of Iowa. I can be a bit relaxed, if uneasy, about generating income because the pandemic allowed me to begin collecting a pension and Social Security. Yes, I know. Not everyone is so fortunate. There were times in my life when I felt more need to hustle. Now I have more time to think. There is no jet waiting to fly me to Texas, or Hawaii, or Sri Lanka. Flights are few and far between these days for all of us. Maybe we are all giving the earth a break, although it will not last.

In any case, each of us is unique, with our own skills, experience, and interests. I have a sister who sews. She is making masks that many of her neighbors in a small Pennsylvania town are happy to acquire, perhaps because they are less available at the nearest pharmacy. Others are rallying to support food distribution to the newly unemployed. Retired teachers have volunteered as online tutors, even if some have had to quickly master the technology. With no restaurants to visit, no sporting events to attend, many of us find more free time on our hands than we have known in a long time. The question is how we use it.

I started, however, by mentioning two categories of activities. The second one is my focus in this essay. When I was racing to the airport to catch that next flight, or catching a CTA train to the next meeting downtown, there were often nagging tasks that I habitually left undone. They involved cleaning up my office, or better organizing my computer files, or painting the walls, for crying out loud. Mowing the lawn got my attention, but cleaning out the garage sometimes had to wait too long. I wasn’t always or necessarily procrastinating; sometimes I just had too much on my plate and ran out of time.

But what happens when the time stretches and you have nowhere to go, even if you need to log in for a virtual meeting now and then? The only traffic jam is on the way down the stairs to the kitchen to get more coffee. Even my workouts, such as they are, take place at home rather than at the gym. Those nagging, neglected tasks have far more opportunity to stare at me all day long.

Alex’s action figure beneath the shredder? Oh, yeah, it reminds me to save the world, I guess.

Like shredding. Yes, shredding. I decided some time ago that a lot of old financial records no longer needed to exist, and if they did, I could scan them into my laptop, then shred them. I’ve stepped up the schedule to two or three sessions per week, lasting up to a half-hour (the shredder needs time to cool off by then), and recently, I found a new use for all that shredded paper that the recyclers don’t want, which would have forced it into the trash bins. About three months ago, my wife arranged to adopt two guinea pigs from another family at our church. They became our grandson’s pets, and he is responsible for cleaning up, feeding, and entertaining them. They seem to need a supply of bedding in their cage, which needs regular cleaning, and it turns out that shredded paper is ideal. At least, that’s what Jean tells me, and I won’t question it because the convenience factor is so high. Here’s another bag! Fortunately, my schedule and years of avoiding the task of shredding have provided quite a backlog, so the guinea pigs should be well supplied for weeks to come.

Sally is happy with her new cage bedding. At least as far as I know.

Then there are books. My mother, when she visited in years past, would ask what I wanted with so many books, though I must say they line the shelves neatly. They are not scattered everywhere. (I was tempted once to reply that I fried them up with salt and pepper for breakfast, but respect got the better of me.) Many have gone unread for lack of time. One at a time, I am reducing the backlog, and my intellectual curiosity remains well fed, perhaps even glutted, but learning is calorie-free, so I am unlikely to get a fat head. I make time every day. I also used to donate books I no longer wanted, but alas, the Salvation Army is not taking donations right now. I also use my Nook to download e-books, reducing clutter. The latest was John Barry’s The Great Influenza, about the 1918 pandemic, prompted by my wife watching his interview on a news show. You ought to get it, she said. Two minutes later, I had it.

Then there is my long-standing, never-got-started project of electronically storing all those photos I shot before I first acquired a digital camera. Merely writing that sentence proves I am a boomer. Beginning in the early 1990s, I sent numerous rolls of film to processors with the foresight to request copies on CDs in addition to printed photos. Because many of them pertain not only to family vacations and personal milestones but also to planning projects and disasters dating as far back as the 1993 Midwest floods, I have wanted to upload and catalog those stacks of CDs, but it will take time. Once I have done that, my photo inventory will expand enormously. If someone decides to write my biography after I kick the bucket, I will have left them a gold mine. In the meantime, I may use the newly accessible photos in teaching, in presentations, and who knows what else. What gems are hiding in your photographic closet? Heck, my wife just this week found an old, long-lost folder of baby and childhood photos my mother must have sent (probably years ago).

You get the idea. If you’re like me, you may have spare-time projects that could last you for years, long past the time someone will perfect a COVID-19 vaccine and tests that will get us past this public health crisis. The restrictions will end, and compulsive extroverts like me will inherit the earth. Or at least the big cities. When we can finally go to the ball game, and meet our friends for a big birthday party at an Italian (or Greek or Mexican) restaurant, will we ever find time to finish what we’ve started—if, like me, you are determined to get started?

Maybe not, but we can put a noticeable dent in the problem. Look, I’m just trying to keep you out of trouble and make you feel good. After all, they say that idleness is the devil’s workshop. Is that where you want to spend your time?

😊

Jim Schwab

Test of Moral Imagination

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Okay, now I’m angry. I had not intended to produce another blog article quite so soon, but false prophets are rampaging through the vineyards of the Lord. Fortunately, there are only a few of them reported so far, two of whom have been cited for certain misdemeanor offenses. But with the coronavirus, it takes only two megachurch pastors calling hundreds of people to live church services to let loose the plague on not only their own followers but everyone around them. They need to get some common sense and knock it off.

In addition, Rev. Jerry Falwell, Jr., son of the founder of the fundamentalist Liberty University in Virginia, has called students back to the campus after spring break, ignoring the actions of almost every other college in the nation to forsake such close contact and take lessons online for the duration of the semester. With several documented cases on campus already, the question is how many more students and staff will be infected.

In Central, Louisiana, Pastor Tony Spell of Life Tabernacle Church was arrested after holding services on Sunday in violation of the emergency order by Gov. John Bel Edwards for Louisiana residents to stay at home for the coming month. Released after his booking, he proceeded to defy the order again by holding services on Tuesday evening. As on Sunday, curious onlookers wondered what he was doing. On Sunday, according to the Chicago Tribune, people in the neighborhood were questioning what made the people of the church think they were so special as to disregard Gov. John Bel Edwards’s stay-at-home order. No one is discriminating against anyone’s religious rights because the order does not prohibit online gatherings and similar modes of worship. It aims to limit large crowds to inhibit the spread of a deadly virus for which there is, as yet, no known vaccine or effective cure. That is a matter of public safety. Thousands upon thousands of other congregations nationwide are live-streaming church services as a substitute for assembling masses of people in a Sunday morning petri dish for coronavirus.

I write from personal experience. My own congregation, Augustana Lutheran Church of Hyde Park, in Chicago, suspended services more than two weeks ago, but provides recordings, readings, and other online and private opportunities for worship and meditation as we can. I serve as the coordinator for the Adult Forum, the Sunday school session for adults, which predictably draws its fair share of devoted seniors, who are at greatest danger of exposure, and about whom we are most concerned. We are not meeting until further notice. We may miss the interaction and the discussions, but we do not wish to put anyone’s life in danger. Our priority is safety. We want everyone to emerge from this in good health.

In Tampa, meanwhile, Pastor Rodney Howard-Browne of the River at Tampa Bay Church violated a stay-at-home order by holding services this past Sunday. He later turned himself in to authorities, but the law firm representing him maintains that the church practiced social distancing. Given the human interactions inevitably occurring in large crowds, that may be beside the point. However, USA Today reports that, in a Facebook post, Howard-Browne described coronavirus as “blown totally way out of proportion.” It is worth noting that Florida is nearing 7,000 confirmed cases with 87 deaths so far, and the trend is moving rapidly upward. One wonders if the families of victims share his perspective.

Mark my words: In the face of the pervasive concerns of neighbors and fellow citizens and fellow Christians, such defiance soon turns to arrogance. And arrogance demonstrates egotism, not faith.

New U.S. coronavirus cases per day, as of April 1, 2020, courtesy of Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_the_United_States
(same for both graphs)
New U.S. deaths from coronavirus per day, as of April 1, 2020, courtesy of Wikipedia

Given several thousand deaths to date in the U.S., out of hundreds of thousands of confirmed cases, with untold suffering likely still to come, I have a simple question for these three ignorant gentlemen:

Who the hell do you think you are?

Pastor Tony Spell insists he will do it again because “God told us to.”

I’m sorry, but I don’t believe that. All those other pastors and rabbis and imams and nuns and priests, including Pope Francis, who is not asking anyone to come to the Vatican for Easter because he cares about the lives of fellow human beings, seem to be getting a very different message, which I suggest might sound something more like this:

Take care of my people. Save lives, especially those of my elderly servants, by taking precautions. This is your chance to show how you love each other, protect each other, and lead each other through the valley of the Shadow of Death. Use this opportunity to make your communities stronger. And, for my sake, think about the lives and health of my thousands of servants on the front lines–the doctors, the nurses, the EMTs, the social workers, the police—they are parts of your flock to whom I have assigned great responsibilities. Please do not think me so vain nor so cruel as to insist on the continuation of live worship services during this crisis. This is your opportunity to show that I have gifted you with moral imagination. Use it.

Jim Schwab

Awesome Natural Attraction in Nebraska

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Last week, I was in Kearney, Nebraska, for three days, attending and speaking at the Nebraska Planning and Zoning Association annual conference. But that is merely an excuse for being in the right place at the right time, for once in my life, to see one of nature’s more spectacular wonders—the migration of the sandhill cranes. I was told that a nature reserve had estimated their total presence at about 600,000 birds.

In their annual migration from South America, they all funnel through about a 90-mile stretch of the Platte River in Nebraska each spring, right around this time. They come by the thousands. It is easy to see what may attract them. The river is very wide but shallow, just inches deep. Away from predators such as coyotes, they can cluster overnight in the water, then move once dawn brings the rising sun to the landscape. Even before dawn in the chilly March morning, you can hear their awking and cawing, but it becomes a roar once they soar into the sky. I am reluctant to try harder to describe the sound; you simply need to hear it.

On their way north, after the Platte River stopover, they again spread out across a range from eastern Russia along the Pacific Coast through Alaska and Canada. According to the Audubon Field Guide, they feed on a variety of grains and small animals. Their young are able to fly within 75 days but accompany their parents for their first nine to ten months, joining the migration. They prefer marshy vegetation and shallow water for nesting sites.

I credit Chad Nabity, who helped organize the Kearney conference, for inviting me to join the small delegation that met at 5:50 a.m. on Friday morning (March 6) in the chilly morning air to walk down a trail to the wooden bridge across the river at the Fort Kearny State Recreation Area. There we waited in the early morning dark, gloves on to keep our camera hands warm, for the sudden movement of masses of birds, which you can watch for yourself below. Thanks to Chad Nabity for sharing his video file and the photo below of three of us at the bridge.

Left to right: Joel Albizo, executive director, American Planning Association; Kurt Christiansen, APA President; myself

Jim Schwab

Costly Coastal Arrogance

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In the days shortly after World War II, writes Gilbert M. Gaul in The Geography of Risk, Morris Shapiro and his family were busy building their own version of Levittown, the famed suburban tract housing development of Long Island, on a barrier island in southern New Jersey known as Long Beach Island. The place had largely been the preserve of fishing villages in earlier years, but Shapiro had a vision, one he passed along to his son, Herbert, in due time.

Shapiro drained and built on what we now call wetlands, but in the 1940s, environmental values were a weak reed for resisting the onslaught of developers who believed in the next big real estate trend and the willingness of small villages to grow with them. And so, Morris persuaded Herbert to buy land around Barnegat Bay, and the few hunters and watermen who understood the value of salt marsh in preserving wildlife habitat were pushed aside. The suburbanization of the Jersey Shore soon took hold.

Nature heals its own wounds when the landscape is healthy, but damage to the built environment can be another matter altogether. Gaul details the impacts of the Ash Wednesday storm that struck the New Jersey coast in the spring of 1962, providing the nation with its first television-era glimpse of disasters yet to come and the high costs of having compromised the protective dunes and wetlands and installed thousands of bungalows on a narrow, highly vulnerable strip of land along the sea. “Nearly all the 5,361 homes on Long Beach Island . . . were damaged,” Gaul tells us, “including 1,000 that were severely impaired and 600 that were destroyed.”

As always, the immediate focus was on rebuilding, with urgent reminders from legislators and others of the economic value of shoreline development (but not its costs). In the face of that Category 5 juggernaut, Gov. Richard Hughes bravely proposed a six-month moratorium on new development, supported by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and a ban on rebuilding along a 100-foot buffer along the beach. Looking back, it seems visionary for its time in anticipating the problems that would otherwise follow, and it attracted precisely the blowback we have come to expect. Federal support for rebuilding came from the Kennedy administration, and the long drift toward increased federal responsibility for recovery was underway.

Gaul goes on to detail the long tale of Jim Mancini, both developer and mayor of Long Beach Island, and cheerleader in chief for the coastal towns and what they saw as their inevitable growth. Still, governors and environmental officials in New Jersey were periodically game for a new try at restraining a situation where local officials controlled building and zoning while state taxpayers provided millions of dollars to repair storm damage and infrastructure. Gov. Brendan Byrne was next in 1979, starting with a conference on the future of the New Jersey shore, followed by initiatives from the state Department of Environmental Protection and the introduction of the Dune and Shorefront Protection Act in the legislature.

Predictably, the mayors rebelled, led by Mancini, who organized 1,500 protesters to attend a July 1980 hearing at the St. Francis Community Center in Brant Beach. Robert Hollenbeck, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, essentially presided over an ambush in which he was repeatedly shouted down by angry homeowners. Once again, the opportunity to take a creative regulatory approach to controlling shoreline damage was driven into wholesale political retreat. By the time Superstorm Sandy delivered its legendary hit in October 2012, it was all over but the shouting. The administration of Gov. Chris Christie was not about to seriously challenge the home rule prerogatives that dominate the politically fragmented landscape of New Jersey township government. The tough questions would have to wait.

What Gaul outlines in New Jersey, of course, has occurred in other forms in other places from the Carolinas to Florida to Texas over the subsequent decades. Gaul takes us to all these locations as the book progresses. What we have seen, time and again, are the costly consequences of a pattern of coastal development that has placed increasing quantities of homes and properties in harm’s way, then begged or even demanded that states and the federal government rescue the storm-damaged communities even as they fight bitterly against regulatory measures aimed at reducing future costs by restricting unwise development.

Of course, by now there are many residents caught in the middle. But surely, it is not impossible to sympathize with their plight and be willing to assist those who seek alternatives, while refusing to continue subsidizing unwise new development or bailing out those who refuse to accept the reality of the risks they have assumed. What is clear is that tough decisions await, and the public does not have endless resources. Wiser development and rebuilding decisions are imperative.

Not surprisingly, Gaul, a veteran Pulitzer Prize-winning author and reporter, is a New Jersey native. But he is also an astute historian and researcher who writes with a well-informed passion that brings us, in the end, to the fateful season of 2017—the year of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria—and then 2018, when all looked calm on the meteorological front until Florence took its toll in North Carolina, followed by Category 5 Michael in the Florida Panhandle. Climate change, inducing hurricanes that become slow-moving rain bombs that flood cities like Houston, is still “not a thing” in the Trump White House. Neither, for the most part, are buyouts of repetitively flooded homes, even as the nation desperately needs to find ways to live more resiliently in the face of the risks it has embedded on its coastal landscapes.

But the costs keep climbing, and it is not impossible to imagine a serious political reckoning under a different administration with a more realistic handle on the stakes involved, which run into the trillions of dollars. It is not impossible, for instance, to imagine a $250 billion disaster if a catastrophic hurricane took direct aim at one of Florida’s major cities. For that reason alone, Gaul’s book may be worth a read. We need to improve the quality and depth of the conversation around issues with such drastic fiscal impact.

Jim Schwab

Facing Waterfront Hazards in Wilmington

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Wilmington, a charming city of just over 100,000 on the far southern edge of the North Carolina coast, has taken some hits from coastal storms in recent years, most notably Hurricane Florence in 2018. Hurricane Dorian this year posed a minor threat but mostly left a trail of 14 identified tornadoes in its wake, a phenomenon familiar in the Southeast, though their association with hurricanes may be less well known elsewhere.

Wilmington Planning Director Glenn Harbeck, who I was told was one of the most knowledgeable people in town for the purpose, on October 8 took me on a boat tour of much of the city’s interior waterfront to let me see and photograph the area along Hewletts Creek, a stream feeding into the Atlantic Ocean behind the barrier island that includes the Masonboro Island Estuarine Reserve. Glenn and his wife have lived in Wilmington for 40 years, during which, he says, they have experienced a succession of hurricanes: Diana (1984), Bertha (1996), Fran (1996), Bonnie (1998), Floyd (1999), Matthew (2016), Florence (2018), and Dorian (2019).

Why it has taken me this long to write about it is another matter related entirely to my own obligations and distractions. At the time, however, I was in Wilmington as the invited keynote speaker for the annual conference of the North Carolina chapter of the American Planning Association. That event was at the city’s convention center, which sits along the Cape Fear River, which basically serves as the city’s western edge, with suburban or unincorporated New Hanover County on the other side. Along with the adjoining Embassy Suites, the complex boasts a boardwalk that allows people to walk to restaurants and other venues in more historic quarters of the city. I joined a party of a dozen at a nearby seafood restaurant, The George on the River, and got to see much of it. Some of the boardwalk appears to need work, but I was not clear on whether that was due to hurricane damage of work in progress. But I can give The George five stars. The food was wonderful and a credit to southern coastal cuisine. (I enjoyed crab-topped salmon with garlic mashed potatoes and spicy collards. I gladly recommend it.) Added appeal derived from the outdoor seating that made for a pleasant evening setting.

But all that followed the boat tour, which came in the late afternoon after a delayed arrival in Wilmington following a long layover in Atlanta on the way from Chicago. The weather had been uncertain, and Glenn was a bit concerned about concluding the trip before it turned rainy or inhospitable, although it never did. It was simply a bit chilly, but my photos have that overcast, gray-sky look as a result.

Compared to some prior tours I have taken of disaster sites, this one was relatively brief with modest expectations. Nonetheless, there are always learning opportunities, and I had never visited Wilmington before. Touring by boat allowed a different perspective than by land. Certain factors became readily apparent, with Glenn supplying ample explanation.

One, to be expected, was that, despite the clear dangers and mitigation challenges associated with a waterfront near the ocean in a region frequently affected by coastal storms and hurricanes, housing along Hewletts Creek remains attractive to its owners and has gained value as a result. These are people who love their boats and their access to the water, and the storms are simply part of the environment, much like a snowstorm in Chicago. Whether everyone takes all the appropriate precautions to protect those properties may be another matter, but most are at least aware of the challenges they face when hurricanes move toward North Carolina.

Because access to the water is a prized asset, most properties include piers, although shared piers are becoming more common, according to Glenn, presumably because of reduced costs and environmental impact. Those piers, however, have typically taken a beating in big storms, and Hurricane Florence contained some solid punches. One problem, he informed me, is that the buoyancy of the wood is the enemy of the piers’ survival because, as the storm surge rises and the piers rise with it, they are bent and twisted and collapse. In other words, the buoyancy of wood works against them. The photos provide ample evidence, but Glenn also told me that some had been repaired in recent months; if I had come three months earlier, the destruction would have been more evident. Past adaptation in some places was to rebuild the piers higher than before to move them above likely wave levels, but frequent storms and high storm surges have sometimes obviated the effectiveness of this approach. Instead, some pier owners are adapting with the use of Titan decking, which uses polypropylene plastic to stabilize the piers during future storms.

There were also, a year after Florence, remaining indications of the damages suffered to the boats themselves, which can easily be tossed about by winds and waves. We encountered one of those (below) toward the end of the tour.  

It should be noted that, although it is inside Wilmington, Hewletts Creek has a much more rural or suburban feel than the Cape Fear River waterfront, which is near the urban heart of the city and its downtown. The riverfront is not primarily residential but encompasses a variety of commercial uses, including hotels and a large marina. In contrast, the waterfront along Hewletts Creek consisted predominantly of private residential property.

I do not wish to leave the impression from this glimpse of Hewletts Creek that what happened there is the extent of the impact of Florence. Although I did not have time on this trip to get a thorough tour of the city, I did receive other information from Glenn and from Christine Hughes, a senior planner with the city for Comprehensive Planning, Design, and Community Engagement. From her, I learned that Wilmington’s working and low-income populations sustained a large hit on their affordable housing stock with the loss of approximately 1,200 apartment units. In September, the Wilmington City Council approved $27 million worth of bond issuances for the Wilmington Housing Authority. A big part of that involved the closure of Market North Apartments on Darlington Avenue, which will be rebuilt. That closure forced evacuation by more than 1,000 residents. Wilmington will be recovering from Florence for some time to come. The cost and numbers of people affected in this housing redevelopment underscore the solemn fact that often low-income and minority populations suffer the greatest impacts of natural disasters. Our communities are not whole unless and until we give them high priority in recovery planning.

It is also worth knowing that the quest for coastal resilience is not new to Wilmington, which has engaged with federal and state agencies for some time, as illustrated in a 2013 report on a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency pilot project on community resilience. Glenn Harbeck has been in his current position for more than seven years after a long period of consulting and knows well the direction the city needs to take, but it is a long road. Residents can learn a great deal about the progress of infrastructure recovery projects from the city’s online map tracking such efforts, which include street and sidewalk repairs and stormwater management. Recovery is a complex process, as Wilmington knows well, and future storms, climate change, and sea level rise will all surely add to the challenges that lie ahead.

Jim Schwab

Discovering a Piece of Chicago

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It is possible to live in a city as large as Chicago and be blissfully unaware of some wonderful things. Chicago, after all, includes 2.7 million people spread over 227 square miles. My wife and I have lived here since 1986, but we do not spend much of our time traversing unfamiliar neighborhoods. Like most people, we have well-worn paths, and at times we visit new areas where we know people and learn from them. Also, like most people with cars, we drive by certain areas without taking time to really see all that they contain, as one might on foot. Because I walk through my own neighborhood, I know a great deal about what is happening. But there are others where I have not a clue.

Chicago is nothing, however, if not full of pleasant surprises. Never mind unpleasant headlines or presidential tweets about crime rates. There are reasons why millions of people still live here. I discovered one this Labor Day weekend through sheer serendipity. I participated in a small workshop at a home on North Virginia Avenue, a street I had never visited before. I looked it up on Google maps and discovered that the homes on the west side of the street border a great park along the North Channel of the North Branch of the Chicago River, a drainage canal built more than a century ago. This channel extends straight north from where it joins the North Branch around Carmen St., just south of Foster Avenue, a major east-west artery that extends from Lake Michigan through Chicago’s North Side into the northwestern suburbs.

Entrance to Legion Park from Ardmore St.

What I saw on the map invited me to explore after I left the event, a little more than half a mile north of Foster, several miles from downtown. I soon realized what a gorgeous asset this neighborhood has just beyond its western edge, and what a gorgeous day I had chosen for my short walk. As at other corners along N. Virginia Avenue, Ardmore terminates on a short stub that opens onto a trail inside Legion Park.

A couple of asphalt paths provide walking, jogging, and bicycle trails with a very modest amount of traffic behind an area largely composed of single-family homes. Between the paths stand a variety of well-maintained deciduous trees whose shade both quiets and cools the park space. As I walked south toward Bryn Mawr Avenue, a major street with a bridge over the channel, the Legion Park Playground, a small haven for children needing adventure and exercise, loomed ahead. A mother and two daughters were using the merry-go-round. In the distance, on the far trail, came bicyclists who never noticed my small camera and did not need to. It was past 1 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon, and it was all so peaceful I could have sat and communed with nature for hours, undisturbed. Someday I may return for that purpose, but today I wanted to explore.

Exploration led me to a follow a cross-path to the North Shore Channel trail closer to the water, which, for the most part, lay hidden behind a screen of forest and uncut grasses, but the trail now led closer to the water by passing under the street above, leading me to a brick wall topped by wrought-iron fencing. Inside the tunnel I found the concrete support system for the road above, the sort of infrastructure that reminds you of what is necessary to allow a road to cross the waterway with minimal disturbance. If it was quiet in the park, it was even quieter down here. The water may not have been especially clean, but in its stillness, it provided a vivid reflection of both the steel girders and the verdant growth above it.

And then, just a few feet away, the waterway emerged in full daylight, with all the foliage that grew above its banks, all the way down to the riprap at the water’s edge. In a matter of seconds, I found myself south of Bryn Mawr, with a whole new section of the park emerging with its own paths, its own playground, and its own softball diamond. I quickly realized that the park was the backdrop to North Side Preparatory High School, which fronts on Kedzie Avenue, but enjoys a remarkable backyard view for those with the wisdom to take it all in.

All this took me perhaps 20 minutes of a slow stroll, with time to shoot photographs. I am aware from the map, and from the sight lines of the channel, that the park extends much farther both south and north from what I saw. But it reminded me, with my own knowledge of the urban landscape as a planner, that cities sometimes, accidentally or intentionally, remember that the best use of a floodplain often is open space, not development, and that the result can be a beautiful asset for the areas around it that are above the water. In Legion Park, even with what to my knowledge is a minimal history of flooding, there is ample room for the water to overflow its banks while harming nothing. The natural environment responds to the freedom we have allowed it and provides us with solitude, and beauty, and an abundance of ecological services. The city can co-exist with its riparian corridors, which afford habitat and recreation in the same space.

Chicago, in recent years, has been discovering that the sacred community space it has preserved so doggedly along its lakefront can and should include its riverfronts as well. The city has cleaned up and improved its Riverwalk along the main channel of the Chicago River downtown, a development I profiled on this blog about three years ago. In this morning’s Chicago Tribune, I read of new kiosk vendors doing business in a new covered space below Wacker Drive along the Riverwalk. But the Chicago River and its tributaries extend much farther into the heart of the city, and they can all serve a purpose in making the city more livable. In fact, in these less populated, less densely developed areas, the very openness and the greater stillness can inspire a spirituality that is harder to achieve in the downtown canyons that linger below skyscrapers and honking traffic. In Legion Park, I could not even hear the traffic. I could only see it in the distance—or witness it on two wheels as someone bicycled past me. What a magnificent gift. We should appreciate such treasures for all they are worth.

Jim Schwab

Simple Gifts

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I wasn’t even supposed to usher on Sunday. My wife and I are part of the usher team at Augustana Lutheran Church in Chicago, but our usual commitment is for the fourth Sunday each month. Jean was elsewhere that day, but I came with our grandson, Alex. I promptly learned from another usher that two men expected to serve were missing. She asked if I could assist her. Why not? I agreed.

Later, she asked if I could be the one who stayed outside in the narthex. One of us usually remains out there to greet late-arriving visitors, distribute bulletins, and take a count of the attendees. During the offering, two more ushers join to assist in passing the collection plates. All in all, it is a relatively easy way to be of service.

Sometimes, there are other tasks—helping newcomers find restrooms, hearing aids, copies of the sermon–whatever. None of it is very complicated. It just requires a willingness to serve.

On this Sunday, as the service progressed, I noticed an elderly, unfamiliar African American gentleman near the back who was fumbling with his hymnal. He flipped through it, then put it back in the little slot below the pew in front of him. This happened two or three times. He looked uncomfortable and frustrated.

Sometimes visitors to a Lutheran church can be slightly confused by the order of worship, depending on what, if any, other Christian tradition they are accustomed to. One primary goal of ushers should be to make everyone feel as comfortable and welcome as possible. I discreetly wandered over and quietly asked if I could be of assistance. I thought I might be able to explain something.

“I can’t read the words,” he told me. Thinking he needed to explain, he added, “The stores have reading glasses for $9, but they cut off my check . . . .” His voice trailed off.

I did not inquire further. Social Security? Disability? Pension? This was neither the time nor the place to ask. He needed glasses.

“I came because I wanted to be able to sing in church.”

There was a heartbreaking note of sincerity in his frustration. It was also striking that inability to afford reading glasses was the source of that frustration. As noted in my last blog post, just a month ago I had cataract surgery to fix my own reading problems, which bore no connection to poverty. Having acquired 20/20 distance vision with artificial lens implants, but needing reading glasses to continue reading and working on a computer, I had gone to Walgreen’s initially to get reading glasses with 1.5 magnification for computer work as recommended by my ophthalmologist after the surgery. After the second surgery, he also recommended 2.5 for normal reading use, such as newspapers or books. In each case, following a suggestion from my younger sister, I looked for a three-pack that cost a little over $16, closer to $20 with sales tax. For the second set, I discovered from the cashier that they were “buy one set, get one free” that day. I now had three pairs for computer use, and six for reading. I spread them around the house to avoid having to find them when I need them. One pair here, one pair there . . . . They were cheap—at least for me.

But this man was embarrassed at his inability to read the hymnal for the mere lack of $10 to buy a pair of readers. I had never thought of such a simple need being out of reach, but for him it was real.

“Let me help you,” I said. I walked away toward our grandson, sitting a few rows forward on the same side of the sanctuary.

“Give me the pouch with the glasses,” I said softly. At first, Alex looked at me as if he were confused. I urgently pointed to the Houston-themed pouch (actually, a rubber beverage cooler and tourism promotional item, adapted for the purpose) in which my reading glasses sat, and he realized what I wanted. I removed the glasses and tossed the empty pouch back on the pew.

I took the glasses back to our visitor. “These are yours,” I said. “I have others.” He looked surprised but accepted them quickly and tried them on.

Before long, he was leafing through the hymnal and the bulletin with the order of service. “I can see really good now,” he said.

During the offering, to my surprise, he insisted on placing a dollar in the plate.

For much of the remainder of the service, as opportunities allowed, I saw him conversing with a young man in the pew behind him, discussing his new experience. “I used to go to the Catholic church,” he said at one point. Perhaps, somewhere, he had heard that, if you really wanted to sing, Lutheran congregations have made a point of it for nearly 500 years. One of Martin Luther’s big changes during the Reformation was to turn his congregations into singing congregations, and so they remain to this day. It is one of the more distinctive aspects of Lutheran worship, and one of the reasons Lutheran composers produced a profusion of hymns in the centuries that followed.

Augustana sanctuary during December 2018 Sankta Lucia celebration.

Or, maybe this man just found us by happenstance.

Either way, he was suddenly happier and seemingly more fulfilled. I now had no glasses until I drove home, which took a while after we picked up Jean, and the three of us enjoyed lunch in a Mexican restaurant in Oak Park, but I no longer need glasses to drive.

And like I said, there were lots more at home.

“They’re yours,” I told the man again. “Just take good care of them.” When not wearing them proudly, he stashed them in a coat pocket for safekeeping.

It was a simple gift, and I have been blessed with more than I need. I don’t know where he lives or how. But I am reasonably certain that he felt his life had improved. At least, it certainly seemed that way, given that new smile on his face.

Jim Schwab

I Can See Clearly Now

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Some readers may have noticed that it has been seven weeks since I last posted to this blog (May 13). That delay was not by design but resulted from circumstances. For two weeks immediately after that last item, I was largely on the road, but that has happened before without slowing my pace. What followed most certainly did.

In early April, after sensing some eye strain in late winter, I responded to notices from Pearle Vision that it had been more than two years since my last eye exam. My last prescription for glasses was in 2016. I figured an updated prescription would cure the problem, as it had before.

This time, the optometrist noted some indications of cataracts, though he stated that an ophthalmologist would have to determine whether they were serious enough to require surgery. I took note and arranged for such an exam. There was a little discussion of floaters, and I indicated they had not been a problem. He ordered new lenses, and by late that week, they were installed in my existing frames. I thought I was good to go.

I was dead wrong. Before the weekend was out, I returned to complain that the new lenses had done nothing to cure some blurring, which I attributed to a long-standing combination of astigmatism with my well-defined myopia. I had been near-sighted since childhood and had glasses since I was ten. I am now 69. Glasses have been part of my existence for six decades. The optometrist conceded that he had not tested for astigmatism, noting, to my surprise, that the 2016 exam had shown no sign of it. Astigmatism, which causes blurred vision, can wax and wane over one’s lifetime. In mine, apparently, it had become much less pronounced than I had realized. But he conducted a free second exam and made minor adjustments to the prescription to solve the problem.

By then, there were only two days before I left for San Francisco for the annual National Planning Conference of the American Planning Association. I had to leave with the existing lenses and wait for the new ones to arrive. Pearle called while I was still in California to say that they had arrived, and I visited their store the very evening I returned. I tried on the new lenses. There was still no benefit in clarifying my vision. I decided to be patient and see what would happen—but nothing. I began to realize other factors might be at work.

In scheduling the ophthalmology exam, I contacted the highly regarded clinic at Northwestern Medical Center, part of the Northwestern University hospital system. They first offered an appointment for May 14 because they were booked for a few weeks, but I was already in their system because of a different issue a year before. I had to decline; I would be flying to Winnipeg that day to speak at the Manitoba Planning Conference. The following week, I would be in Cleveland for the annual conference of the Association of State Floodplain Managers. We finally settled on May 30. My own schedule produced the delays.

Dr. Pyatetsky and me during a post-op appointment.

At that appointment, I met Dr. Dmitry Pyatetsky, who conducted the exam. He quickly informed me that my right eye had a serious cataract that needed surgery. The left eye had a smaller cataract, and the wise approach would be to follow with surgery on the second eye. Cataract surgery basically involves breaking up the cataract, which clouds one’s vision, and then replacing the natural lens in the eye with an artificial lens that provides 20/20 vision. I would no longer need glasses, except for reading and computer work. For the first time in my adult life, I would spend most of my day seeing clearly without glasses. Moreover, Dr. Pyatetsky chose to waste no time. Surgery on the right eye was scheduled for June 20, just three weeks later, preceded by some preparatory appointments including a biometric exam to acquire precise eye measurements. That exam also determined that there was nowhere near enough astigmatism to justify Toric lenses, which can correct astigmatism but involve an out-of-pocket expense in the low four figures. I would have spent the money if there had been a problem to solve that insurance would not cover, but I was relieved to find out otherwise.

In fact, I was relieved by many things I learned about modern eye surgery. We live in an age that has made routine many procedures that used to be either problematic or downright dangerous for past generations. I was aware of this already on an intellectual level, but this experience made it personal.

Just a year ago, as an adult nonfiction book awards judge for the Society of Midland Authors, I had read The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine, a remarkable piece of medical history by Lindsey Fitzharris, for which our Honorable Mention was merely one of several prizes, topped by the 2018 PEN/E.O. Wilson Prize for Literary Science Writing. This graphic, often gruesome story made me acutely aware of the benefits we enjoy from medical advances, for only two centuries ago, it was demonstrably dangerous to visit doctors or hospitals, who understood nothing about germs and infections and seldom bothered to clean the instruments with which they performed their surgeries. The result was a high death rate but no grasp of their cause. The story details Dr. Joseph Lister’s struggle to prove that sanitation was essential, in the face of a medical profession in the Victorian era that preferred not to believe that its own practices put patients at risk. One can, of course, read much more about this monumental shift in medical thinking that put many benighted practices behind us. Nearly 15 years ago, in reading Dark Horse: The Surprise Election and Political Murder of President James A. Garfield, by Kenneth D. Ackerman, I learned that Garfield’s death in 1881 was more the result of medical malpractice and the refusal of his doctor to accept modern bacterial science than a direct result of the assassin’s bullet. Historically speaking, we are not so far removed from the Dark Ages, yet the medical advances of recent decades have been stunning.

As someone who will turn 70 late this year, I am experiencing a growing appreciation of all that is possible with modern medical practice. Old age no longer need be the cavalcade of horrors that it once was. What is true generally is certainly true of modern ophthalmology. The time is not long past when cataracts were simply a fact of advancing age. The Bible is replete with references to lost vision as a result of age, such as “Isaac was old, and his eyes were dim, so that he could not see” (Genesis 27:1). The situation was common well into the 20th century. Although medical history documents surgical procedures for cataracts dating back for many centuries, a close reading of the techniques mostly reveals what must seem a catalogue of horrors from the perspective of modern patients. Couching, in which the lens was pushed into the rear of the eye with a curved needle, was replaced in the 1700s, at least in Europe, by extraction, which broke up the cataract and sucked it out. Johann Sebastian Bach underwent couching but remained blind and, in his case, died four months later. Nothing about these procedures sounds pleasant or painless, or without profound side effects.

It was not until the 1940s that British ophthalmologist Harold Ridley hit upon the use of polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA), a type of plastic that lacks any inflammatory qualities (so long as it does not touch the iris) as an artificial lens implant, now known as the intraocular lens (IOL). Among the inspirations for this approach to restoring sight was the observation that Royal Air Force pilots in World War II showed no adverse impacts from absorbing PMMA when their fighter plane shields were shot out by German planes, leaving tiny shreds of PMMA shrapnel in their eyeballs. This biological tolerance for PMMA paved the way for the first transplant of an IOL in 1949 in London. Subsequent innovation introduced the use of phacoemulsification, which permits the use of ultrasound to emulsify the natural lens and eliminate the need for removal with an incision. In short, the past half century of medical improvements in this field has made a world of difference for patients like me in 2019. The surgical success rate is now somewhere around 99.5 percent. Especially considering that I had almost no other health problems that might interfere with recovery, I was happy to take those odds. In fact, by the time the second surgery was conducted, on the left eye, on June 26, I was mostly just anxious to get it all over with. 

The reason was simple. Until April, I was not even aware I had a cataract and had never given the possibility of it much thought. However, by May, aware that new glasses had solved nothing but increasingly aware of my own blurred sight, I found myself increasingly limited in my ability to read or work efficiently. One turning point came while I was in Manitoba. My agreement with the Manitoba Planning Conference was both to lead a three-hour workshop on the opening day (Wednesday) and provide a keynote address on the closing day. The workshop posed little challenge because I had converted a lengthy article I had produced for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Natural Hazard Science, on “Planning Systems for Natural Hazard Risk Reduction,” into a teaching format with substantial audience participation. It was a small group in a small room, I knew the material thoroughly, and my need to rely on the screen to see my PowerPoints was minimal. Nothing challenged my visual acuity. Then, on Thursday, I was introduced to the format in the ballroom for the next morning’s keynote, in front of 250 Canadian planners. Two large screens would be on either side of me, facing the audience, but speakers should face the audience and not be looking at those screens, so another, smaller screen was set at the base of the dais, away from audience view, but allowing me to see the slide on display.

Presenting the keynote at the Manitoba Planning Conference in Brandon, Manitoba.

I quickly realized there was one problem: I could not see the slides clearly. I knew right then that I did not want to be squinting at slides in the middle of a tightly timed, 45-minute presentation. I simply had to know the slides intimately so that the broad image reminded me of what I wanted to say even if I could not quickly or clearly discern the details of a graph.

And so it was. I undertook the extra work of memorizing those details overnight because only rarely do I speak from a script. I prefer to be able to remember what I want to say about each slide, but under ordinary circumstances, I can also see that slide in front of me, on a laptop screen or, in this case, a screen sitting on the platform. In this case, I had to wing it. I did it, and all was well. The main lesson was that I realized I had a noticeable problem two weeks before the ophthalmological exam confirmed it. For some people, cataracts grow slowly and can remain small enough not to merit surgical attention for months or even years. In my case, the cataract grew quickly, and my life had to adjust accordingly.

Dr. Pyatestsky with his assistant (and sister) Julia, who plans to start nursing school.

All that said, the adjustment has changed a significant aspect of my life permanently. I have reading glasses for computer work and reading newspapers, books, and the like. But for all other purposes, including driving and physical activities, I now benefit from 20/20 vision. I am grateful to the medical staff at Northwestern, including Dr. Pyatetsky, for their outstanding care and patient services. They have been excellent. I am also simply grateful for living in the 21st century. There was a time when people like me had few options once they had grown old “and their eyes grew dim.”

Instead, I can enjoy life, exercise safely, and continue to contribute to the world and community around me. I consider that the very essence of satisfaction with life.

Jim Schwab

Gratitude on Parade #10

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GRATITUDE ON PARADE
#gratitudeonparade
One of the finest assets of any city or region is its cultural organizations, particularly for the arts. I’ve long been a member and officer of the Society of Midland Authors, a Midwest home for authors that is based in Chicago. And I’ve learned that these organizations don’t just maintain themselves. Dedicated people do hard work to sustain them. In the case of SMA, such people have done this for nearly 105 years since the group’s founding in 1915 with the likes of Harriet Monroe, Sherwood Anderson, and others. What a legacy.

In the current day, Thomas Frisbie, like his father, Richard, before him, has invested years of his life and countless hours of time as president, newsletter editor, and membership secretary, among other posts, helping to sustain the success of the Midland Authors, which maintain a thriving annual book awards contest, hundreds of author members, and monthly programs to enrich the cultural scene of Chicago and the Midwest. The organization would not be the same without him.

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GRATITUDE ON PARADE

#gratitudeonparade
In the tribute last night to Thomas Frisbie, I mentioned that the Midland Authors sponsor an annual book awards contest. For the last two years, I have been an adult nonfiction judge, and I have served on both adult nonfiction and biography panels in many years past. And sure enough, someone has to coordinate that whole operation, with 18 judges in six categories, an annual banquet to bestow the awards, and other duties, such as getting timely notice to publishers, tracking entry fees, seeing that plaques are made, etc. It’s a complex operation.

Several years ago, Marlene Targ Brill stepped into those shoes, seeking to rationalize the program and put it on a sounder financial footing. As the saying goes, she keeps the train running on time. She stares down challenges in lining up judges who can work together amicably to produce good decisions about winners and honorable mentions. She follows up with winning authors and their publishers. And she keeps smiling through it all, every hour of it volunteer work. Winners or not, the competing authors owe her a debt of gratitude, as do all of us in the organization. This is a major literary event for Chicago, and Marlene makes it work.

Posted on Facebook 4/9/2019

GRATITUDE ON PARADE
#gratitudeonparade

Just today, Greg Borzo sent out a complete list of dates for which he had lined up venues for programs for the 2019-2020 season for the Midland Authors. He’s on top of his job as the program coordinator for the Society. For the last two or three years, at least, he has been the indefatigable, cheerleading organizer of one provocative or fascinating program after another by authors and civic leaders with something to say and stories to tell. This function is part of what keeps the Midland Authors alive and thriving. Greg’s creativity in arranging these programs has been remarkable. For that, he earns our gratitude.

Want to find out? Check the schedule at midlandauthors.com and attend a program or two. You’ll be pleasantly surprised. And those photos below? Just a few of the engaging faces of tonight’s honoree for Gratitude on Parade.

Posted on Facebook 4/18/2019

GRATITUDE ON PARADE
#gratitudeonparade
The capstone of this series of tributes to leaders of the Midland Authors concludes with someone who, unfortunately, is no longer here to read it. But who knows, maybe he can anyway. It would be fitting. Richard Frisbie certainly deserved to hear it.

Richard Frisbie was twice president of the Society of Midland Authors, and in between and beyond was a constant presence on the board of directors, at its awards banquets, and at many of its programs and functions. His humor, long memory, and perspective contributed greatly to the organizations’ progress and good judgment as it renewed itself for a brighter future in serving the Chicago and Midwestern literary community. He had successful careers in both journalism and advertising.

Like the rest of us, since we are all authors in SMA, he also wrote books. His brought fun into people’s lives, such as “It’s a Wise Woodsman Who Knows What’s Biting Him,” a guide to practical outdoor adventures. Along the way, Richard raised several children, one of whom, Tom, remains a key figure among the Midland Authors, while others are key players in civic and environmental enterprises across the Chicago area, such as Friends of the Chicago River. He and his departed wife, Margery, must have known what they were doing. They left quite a legacy. So here’s to you, Richard, watching over the rest of us, hopefully with pride.

Posted on Facebook 4/22/2019

Jim Schwab

Romping through South Florida

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Two weeks ago, I spun a narrative about hazard mitigation in Hillsborough County, Florida, based on both prior knowledge and a personal tour conducted by long-time colleague Eugene Henry. Today, a full month or more after that visit, I add notes about touring the Sarasota area with my personal friend and high school classmate, David Taylor.  David is a Vietnam veteran and professional photographer who was part of the Brecksville (Ohio) High School class of 1968. Yes, we graduated in the middle of it all in the late 1960s.

Unlike me, David was drafted into the army. I maintained a student deferment initially, then went untouched by the draft lottery, which reached 125 the year I surrendered my deferment. Numbers were based on the number pulled for your birth date. Mine was 135. Such was the luck of the draw in those days. In less than two months on the ground in Vietnam, David was badly injured in a mortar explosion, evacuated to a hospital and sent home. His injuries were more than severe enough to terminate his service. He spent months in rehab. When it became clear that cold weather aggravated his disabilities, he moved to Florida. He has lived there ever since. He and his wife, Linda, now live in a small home in a subdivision near the water in Sarasota.

His long tenure in Florida has allowed him ample time to learn the sights and sounds of his adopted home. One thing my wife and I learned from staying with him for five days is that Dave is relentlessly curious. He attended and videotaped my February 22 lecture for Florida Atlantic University in West Palm Beach, then loaded the 37-gb high-res recording on a flash drive. Download it to your laptop when you get back, then reload the flash drive with as many documents and photos about your work as will fit on it, he told me.

I don’t think Dave completely understood. I could give him nearly everything I have and never fill up a drive of that size. But Dave lives in the film world, and all the reports I have downloaded as PDFs and all the still photos I have ever taken will never equal more than a fraction of that memory. I gave him all I could.

More importantly, however, Dave took us on some tours to take maximum advantage of the two days we had remaining after returning from West Palm Beach (a 3 ½-hour drive across the southern interior of Florida). From an environmental standpoint, it is important to know that Florida is a more diverse state than outsiders may realize and that, due to rapid urbanization in the past few decades, it also faces environmental challenges and threats of significant proportions. The state has been wrestling with many of these for a long time. The fate of the Everglades triggered one of the most notable environmental policy battles in American history, but there are many smaller issues as well, many engendering serious public health concerns as well.

One to which Dave took us, new to me, was the American Beryllium site on Tallevast Road in Sarasota. Now abandoned, the site hosted a manufacturing facility for machine parts of the Loral Corporation, parent company of American Beryllium, for more than 30 years until 1996. The operations created beryllium dust that contaminated the soil and groundwater. Lockheed Martin acquired the plant in 1996 and closed it down. Subsequent investigations discovered the contamination and documented the need for cleanup of what was then a brownfield site. By 2008, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services completed its own assessment of the health risks, concluding that, while there was a wide margin of possibilities given the combination of contaminants including trichloroethylene in the beryllium-containing metals on the site, there was a definite public health hazard. Previous use of groundwater by local residents and employees, which by then had ceased, posed a credible risk of kidney cancer, liver cancer, leukemia, and lymphoma. By 2004, all nearby residents had been using municipal water, but the long-term legacy could not be ignored.

Fence provides no real security for American Beryllium site.

The site today is mostly an empty lot next to a golf course. There is a fence around it that, frankly, is not well maintained, but how much danger the site poses at this point, I do not know. The empty lot looks rather forlorn, yet the area around it contains a fair amount of operative commerce. When, if ever, the site will be ready for reuse remains to be seen. Mostly, it is a sobering reminder of our past use and misuse of such toxic materials in manufacturing processes and the problems they often leave behind. Beryllium is a divalent element, a strong metal with high thermal stability that is useful in aerospace applications, certainly of interest to a firm like Lockheed Martin. But often in the past, manufacturing firms took inadequate measures to prevent the sort of pollution that materialized on this site. The result is a long-standing eyesore for Sarasota.

But there were other things to see in the area, like Myakka River State Park, which features a wildlife preserve that is worth visiting and attracts many visitors. Park officials are often available to explain the wildlife you are seeing, such as snowy egrets, cypress trees, vultures, and, of course, alligators. The vultures seemed exceptionally calm and contented, so Dave and I concluded that they had already had their fill for the day.

Vultures line the shore of the river.

Unable to stop myself—we have a growing collection of souvenir mugs in our cupboards—I bought a reasonably priced mug from the gift shop with the state park logo embedded in the ceramic. Our children one day, when we are no longer breathing, may wonder “Myakka what?” and pass it on to the nearest Salvation Army store, but we will enjoy it for the next 20 years, or until one of us accidentally drops it on the floor (whichever comes first). Who knows when we will be back?

David has vivid memories of his Vietnam experiences, and to some extent, like most Purple Heart veterans, of the trauma involved in his experience. This remains no small part of his semi-retired life, in which he is also enrolled in film and history classes at nearby State College of Florida, and continues part-time photographic work. So, he took us to the Sarasota National Cemetery, where veterans may choose to be buried, and where he has attended and participated in numerous ceremonies. Kiosks exhibit photos documenting the veteran experience as far back as World War I but as recent as Afghanistan. The growing Florida population including the elderly means a growing number of veterans for whom the cemetery may be a final resting place. It is always a sobering encounter with reality to visit such a place—to realize how many lives are affected, for good or ill, by the nation’s struggles throughout our history. One does not have to agree with a particular war, and I have certainly disagreed with some, to recognize the magnitude of the sacrifice of those in uniform and the respect they deserve. Just gazing out at a wide field of gravesites should be enough to convey the message. War is no trifling thing. We invariably owe our veterans a serious explanation when we send them into battle.

On that Saturday evening, however, it was time for fun, and Dave and Linda took us to a comedy club, McCurdy’s Comedy Theater and Humor Institute, which was great fun, and on the way back to their home, we stopped at the “Kissing Sailor” statue, developed from an iconic photo of a sailor embracing his beloved on the streets of Manhattan as the official surrender of Japan and the end of World War II were announced. Each couple shot photos of the other standing beneath this unique feature of the urban landscape in Sarasota.

Dave and Linda beneath the Kissing Sailor.

The next morning, with our free time waning before driving to the Tampa International Airport, we all made one last stop, at the Ken Thompson Park. What would Florida be without its beaches? Ken Thompson, the namesake of the park, was a long-time city manager in Sarasota. More importantly, the beach, like the rest of southern Florida, was 84° F. and sunny, with plenty of people resting on the sand and taking in the scenery of the Gulf Coast. Not far away are opportunities to follow a boardwalk through a small forest. It is small wonder in such a setting that Florida might beckon to anyone used to northern weather in the winter, but duty called, and Chicago is very nice once spring arrives.


In fact, I took so long to write this story that it is here. Tomorrow I plan to take time to ride my bicycle on the 606 Trail, whose story I told in this blog when it opened nearly four years ago. Snow? It happens, but it’s over for now, just a fading memory.

Jim Schwab